I was born on Friday, October 20th in 1972 on Moody AFB in Valdosta, Ga.
Bela Lugosi, Jelly Roll Morton and Tom Petty also have birthdays on October 20th.
Within a year of being born we ( my mom and dad and I ) moved to an American air force base in England.
We moved back to the United States after my sister was born. I was 7 years old.
My dad was a fighter pilot.
His dad was a fighter pilot.
My first “musical” inspiration was the sound of loud jet airplanes over my head.
The sound of jets gave me mixed feelings of security, freedom, excitement and fear.
I discovered that feeling again as a 12 year old living in Atlanta Ga in the form of Eddie Van Halen’s “Eruption”.
This started my obsession with the electric guitar.
Quickly, I learned that writing music and coming up with ideas came naturally to me.
I could never seem to finish learning someone else’s song before it inspired me to write something of my own.
This personality trait was recurring and eventually led to me being diagnosed as a teenager with ADD.
My next major inspiration came when i was 16 and living in Montgomery Alabama.
My mom, watching David Letterman, called to me into the living room and said
“you should come see this, i think you’ll like it.”
Tom waits performed “Tango till They’re Sore” from his album Raindogs.
That was it! ha ha …Amazing! Thanks mom!
I never was the same.
After graduating high school in 1990 at 17yrs old I moved back to Atlanta to rejoin my bandmates. In the early 90’s the national music scene was extremely exciting and Atlanta was buzzing.
We lived in a big, nearly abandoned warehouse on the corner of 10th St. and Howell Mill Rd. We stayed up most nights rehearsing, writing music and being inspired as young adults in the world by each other, our surroundings and our musical influences.
In 1991 parts of the movie Kalifornia were filmed in our warehouse space. They could make nighttime look like daytime by shining bright lights through our brick glass windows. Exciting times. Brief nocturnal conversations with Brad Pitt and Juliette Lewis. We saw Nirvana perform at the Masquerade just after releasing their album Nevermind. I worked in the legendary fondue restaurant Dante’s “Down the Hatch” while the Paul Mitchell jazz trio was playing on a big ship next to live crocodiles in a mote. After working I would ride my motorcycle back to the warehouse and spend nights with my best friends next to bonfires outside by the railroad tracks as trains were passing by in the night.
Nothing lasts forever. Situations change and people grow.
My close friend and band mate, Robin Finck, went on to audition for Nine Inch Nails and got the job shortly thereafter.
The Goodies were born in the summer of 1993. I decided to grow a handlebar mustache.
The beginning days of The Goodies were some of the most exciting creative times of my life as an artist. Everything felt brand-new. Rose colored glasses. One song after another song of Goodies classics kept showing up on the doorstep of my mind. It was a magical, innocent and inspiring time. I decided I wanted The Goodies to be a blend of Joel Grey in Cabaret, Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas and Tom Waits.
We wrote songs, played gigs and eventually discovered a small gem of a town tucked away in the mountains of western North Carolina called Asheville. After two visits with The Goodies, I decided I was going to live there.
I loved the smell of Asheville. I loved the cool air and the beautiful historic buildings. I loved being able to see the stars. And I loved the way the nature, mountains and trees dwarfed the cars, trucks and trains moving through them so that they looked like little toys.
The Goodies continued to tour through the southeast in the 1990’s and then took a much needed break in 1999 . I moved to Charleston SC with my first wife just before our first son, Sebastian, was born in 2000.
A year later after moving back to Asheville The Goodies reunited and recorded The Postcard EP. We kept regularly playing up until around 2004 when we released “The Goodies live!” album.
My second son, Gabriel, was born in 2006.
I produced 2 albums for other artists while working as a fine dining server to support my growing family. In 2007 it was apparent I needed to learn another craft and pursuit a more family-friendly “day job”. Barbering was interesting to me. I could use my hands to create and I love a good conversation. I enrolled in hair school and put down music for the most part, playing occasionally here in there. I wrote what songs i could in my very limited free time.
The great recession in 2008 and a divorce in 2010 eventually led me to my soulmate, Lilian. We married in the summer of 2013.
In 2014 with enough songs under my belt to make a full length record. With the encouragement of my wife I launched a very successful Kickstarter campaign. With very generous contributions from my family and friends I began recording with my producer and childhood friend Greg Thum. We recorded half of the album Mind the Gap in Taos New Mexico and half of the album at Echo Mountain recording studios in Asheville North Carolina.
Since writing the song “Pirates and Thieves” for my 2 boys in 2007 up until the release of Mind the Gap it has been about a ten-year span.
I am extremely proud of this finished work and excited for what the future holds.
My wife, Lilian, and I are expecting the arrival of our brand-new baby girl, Wren, in January 2017.